Looking Ahead with Cotton: Some Trends and Some Choices

Excerpts from the report: First of the basic steps toward improving the cotton situation is fitting cotton into a balanced southern economy. Achieving such balance concerns far more than good rotations, wise use of the soil, and other phases of efficient farm management on individual farms. It concerns how much cotton the South should grow, where and how it should be grown, and what kind of prices farmers should expect for it. It involves how much of what other products farmers should raise in connection with, or in place of, cotton. It concerns the whole question of the balance between farm and nonfarm jobs in the South—how many families would do best on the land, and how many in factories, stores, or offices. The demand for and the price of cotton also will have a great deal to do with cotton's future place in a balanced agriculture and a balanced economy. And the price and markets for cotton, in turn, will be greatly affected by the kind of national cotton policy we follow after the war. It is the people themselves who will say what our policy is going to be. Making the right decision for cotton will not be easy; a great many complicated situations have to be taken into account